just_another_day_in_the_crazy

Just Another Day in the Crazy Motel

She's was lying on her bed, trying her hardest to remember all that she'd done in the past two days. She knew, roughly, the big things, like the cutting, and getting admited to the Crazy Motel, as she calls it. She desperately wanted to remember, because she'd been transferred to the closed ward, the one that they keep locked up 24 hrs a day 7 days a week.

She knew why. It's kinda hard to miss, but she doesn't remember doing it or where the razor, her precious razor, was hidden. She does remember fighting with herself, after she came back to her body, from the spot in the corner of the ceiling, fighting about whether or not she should take the razor to a nurse or if she could just hold on to it for safe keeping. (SAFE keeping, yeah right!)

She finally took it to the nurses, but they blew the whole thing out of proportion. They called the doctor on call, and he decided she would be better off on the locked ward, basically a glorified cage. Then, today, she managed to get the nurses to call HER doctor to see about getting priveledges, so that she could attend the groups on the open unit.

She was doing okay over there, since she desperately wants to keep her priveledges, but one of the other tenants (patients, as the staff refers to them) asked about her hallucinations. "What do you see?" "What do the voices say to you?" They wanted details, things that she doesn't really remember, or want to remember, truthfully. Why does everyone focus on what I can't remember? she wondered to herself. All she wanted was to be treated like a normal human being, not like a freak that can't remember half her life, or a freak who sees and hears things that aren't really there.

Right now, she is lying on her stomach writing in her composition book, since they wouldn't allow her to have the spiral that she used as a journal. It's all thoughts and questions, whatever was on her mind. The classical music from the dayroom is drifting in through the small crack between the door and the frame. She doesn't like it over on the locked ward, and is contemplating asking if she can go back over onto the othet side, just for a little while. They let her go, and she retreats to more familiar territory, just in time for dinner.

Shrimp and fries... "Hospital food, what can you expect?" she thinks aloud. No big surprise, it doesn't taste very good, but she eats it anyway. Then the waiting begin, waiting for her doctor to come see her. She casually talks with some of the other tenants. The want to know what it's like on the "other side". She tells them that all they need to know is they don't want to be sent over there. It's weird, and a little scary, but all in all, it is not all that bad; just boring.

Someone calls her name. It's her social worker. Every patient has one when they are inpatient. She wants to go over the treatment plan. So she excuses herself, gets up and follows the social worker. It's not like she has anything better to do. But the voices are getting louder, adn harder to ignore. Eventually her the social worker is done, but she doesn't remember anything that was said while she was in the office.

She walks out of the office, and her doctor is waiting in the hallway, ready to see her. Finally, she thinks, I've been waiting all day for this. "Are you up for a visit?" her doctor asks. 'Of course, there's nothing better to do here,' she thinks but, outwardly, she just nods her head.

They walk into a small room, for privacy, and her doctor starts, "So you dissociated....." a simple nod.... "and got out a razor that you had hidden somewhere, and cut yourself...." another nod..... "and then took the blade to a nurse and let them clean your arm up...." another nod. One thing her doctor has always been good at is being blunt, but she leaves room for explanation if needed, and explanation is needed on this one. She tells her doctor about a woman, who was talking shit and making her mad. This woman basically said that she didn't have any reason to cut herself because she didn't have a long, hard life. She also explain that the last thing she remembers is sitting, talking with several other "patients" in front of the nurse's station, and then she was sitting on the floor in her bathroom, with a razor in her had and blood pouring down her arm. At this point, while she was talking, the voices got louder, and she began to space out again.

She tells the doctor about the voices and about her fears, and the world stops, then jumpstarts again, with her sitting on the floor of the bathroom in her new room on the closed ward, and like last time, there is blood on her arm. The differnece is that this time there is a nurse standing over her, holding her pills. He is saying something about he pills and then about the bloody paper towel in her hand. She tries to answer, but can't seem to form the words to answer him. He walks off, after asking her to come sit in the dayroom so that they can watch her closer.

She gets up, washes her arm, and goes into the hall. She finds the other nurse, and gestures that she wants her arm to be wrapped up, so that she won't mess with the cuts again. The nurse understands, and does it for her. By this time, she can talk a little, and asks how long ago she saw her doctor. The nurse answers, "Two hours...." 'Two hours, OH MY GOD!!!' she thinks. She decides it would be better if she were to go to bed, and prepare herself for tomorro, just another day in the Crazy Motel.....

I wrote this while I was inpatient at a mental hospital. It is supposed to sound like fiction, but this realy is how one of the days went while I was there. Welcome to my world.